Vlad Masters Read the Evil Overlord List
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: A series of vignettes based on a simple premise. (Based on the list at the TVTropes website.) Will likely get into AU scenarios for the entries that would not fit DP canon. Rating now raised for consumption of alcohol.
1. Rule 1

Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "The Cave" by Mumford and Sons.

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**1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear Plexiglas visors, not face-concealing ones.**

A brushed-steel elevator door dinged open, and Vlad Masters emerged. He swept down the hall to his office, all thick-pile carpet and immaculate green and gold paint. He glanced at his watch, frowned and shifted his gaze to a small desk at the end of the hall.

A thin, thirty-something man with a bad comb-over was staring intently at a flat-screen monitor, muttering something into his headset. So this was his new personal assistant. Vlad paused for a moment. The man turned, spotted his boss and went stock-still. Vlad rolled his eyes. He gave the walking bundle of nerves a week, at most, before he put in for a transfer to one of the less critical departments.

Vlad walked briskly past the desk, hardly breaking stride as the door's recognition software scanned and admitted the CEO, the door sliding open and closed without a sound. Smiling, he made a mental note to look up whoever had designed, or otherwise acquired the designs for, that particular bit of machinery and give them the usual small bonus. Good behavior should be rewarded. One could catch more flies with honey, and all that "popular psychology" cheese by-product.

Sighing, he settled into the high leather chair and started to go through the never-ending mountain of paperwork that appeared on his desk whenever he looked away. All his myriad powers and ridiculous wealth, and he couldn't find any way to eliminate red tape. Ridiculous.

Twenty minutes later, he was shaking out his sore wrist and glaring at the intricate wall clock – handmade, from Switzerland. A pointless expense, but it impressed some of his more affluent visitors, and he was never one to pass up an advantage, no matter how slight.

A hesitant, rapid knock. Speaking of slight, those were his idiot new assistant's chances of surviving the next ten minutes.

"Come in," he ordered.

The door slid open a few inches, and the man who'd been standing behind it jumped a good five inches into the air. He all but jumped over the threshold, looking nervously back as the door slid closed. Vlad smiled. Messing with the minds of lesser men would never get old.

"Yes?" he asked indulgently.

"Um, eh, sir," the little man stammered, gulping audibly. "I have the designs for the Master's Blasters uniforms."

Vlad just looked at his soon-to-be-ex-assistant.

The man lifted a piece of paper and pointed at a line about a third of the way down. "It says here that all new uniform designs had to be personally approved by you."

Vlad paused, pondering and verifying the claim. It was supposed to go up the change of command straight to his... his current personal secretary. Well, at least that explained why the little man had the papers in the first place.

"And you decided that the best course of action was to interrupt my work?" This question rather strongly implied: And get your worthless self fired?

He shook his head. "N-no, sir! I just, um…"

Painful silence.

"Outside, there's um, someone to see you."

A raised eyebrow.

"He says he's from a government agency, the Guys in White."

"Ah, Agent K, or perhaps O? Odd, they're generally joined at the hip," he mused. "Something about regulation 79-B subsection whichever-it-was."

The assistant just shook harder, undoubtedly waiting for the sword to fall.

Vlad just looked at him for a second, and then snapped, "Well? Send him in."

"Yes, sir," he chattered, relieved. The man turned to leave, and then stopped as if pinned in place.

"The designs, you."

The man whirled the rest of the way around and walked stiffly to the grand hand-carved desk at which Vlad held court, holding the papers out like a shield, or an offering to a capricious god. Vlad took the papers and waved the man away.

The man stood there.

"What?" Vlad asked.

"It's Thompson, not 'you.' I'm t-terribly sorry if I've bothered you, sir." As if disbelieving of his own actions, the man backed away a few feet, turned and walked mechanically out of the office at a pace just short of a jog, stopping only for Vlad to let him back out.

Vlad looked at the door and decided to put it out of his mind for the moment. Now, should he let the GIW lackey sweat for a moment, or just get it over with?

…He did not want to deal with any of those idiots any longer than absolutely necessary. Vlad pulled a flat display out of one of the many hidden compartments of his desk that showed the security camera feed directly outside his office. His latest visitor was on the thin side, vaguely Asiatic looking with hair in a military crew cut and the ubiquitous white suit and mirrored sunglasses, just one of many faceless minions making up the general staff of the Guys in White. Vlad let the display retract automatically, buzzing the man in.

The minion walked in, sharp shoes making no sound on the carpet, and stopped precisely three feet from the edge of Vlad's desk.

Vlad said evenly, "What do you have to report?"

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A/N: Because of course Vlad has spies in the GIW. He has spies everywhere.


	2. Rule 2

Disclaimer: I don't own DP

BGM: "Planet Hell" by Nightwish.

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**2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.**

All was quiet at the Axion Labs Research and Development Facility. Uniformed men armed with tasers and nightsticks marched up and down the halls, peering around corners and watching for any possible sign of an intruder. At least, that's what they should have been doing. With less than an hour until the next shift change, the security guards were more likely to be standing or leaning against convenient walls trying not to fall asleep.

At this hour, the research facility was nearly empty. Other than security guards and perhaps a very late (or very early) cleaning crew, no one was supposed to be here. The key phrase here being "supposed to be". Neither scientists nor their supervisors were known for working reasonable hours, and at least one lab would be going at all hours.

The head of security had lodged numerous complaints about the lack of enforcement of basic safety protocols, but his superiors' only responses had been the instatement of a pass-card system as well as a standing order that the security guards check any active labs for alarms going off or passed-out scientists when they passed them. The head of security had reportedly locked himself in the employee lounge for three hours, leaving only when several photographs that may have been of said superiors were reduced to confetti, courtesy of a convenient dart board. He spent the rest of the day muttering dire predictions involving chemical spills, fires and who-knew-what sort of accidents whenever he wasn't chewing out a hapless subordinate.

As it turned out, he had been one hundred percent right about the need for more stringent security – just not for the reasons he'd thought. Vlad Masters could attest to this, had he been recognizable as Vlad Masters at the time. No, as far as the guards knew, he was Samson Wren, a biotech researcher with mid-level clearance, as well as a confirmed bachelor with no living relatives or close friends within 100 miles. Perfect.

"Samson" smirked in a way that would have been recognized as wholly uncharacteristic by anyone who knew the man. If asked, those coworkers who actually recognized him would have described him as apathetic, largely unmotivated and almost entirely expressionless. Now, however, his face was lit up with a malicious, triumphant glee.

The man closed the program he'd had running, ignoring all the other doubtless incredibly expensive machines surrounding him. He removed a floppy disk from the terminal, switching it out with a prepared disk containing a special bit of programming of his own design. All trace of his activities would be gone within half an hour, and no one would ever be the wiser.

Getting out of the rigid plastic chair he'd been sitting in, he stretched widely, flinching when he moved one shoulder too far and got a muscle spasm in the neck. "Ow," he mouthed. "Why must these egghead types never exercise?"

This last complaint entirely discounted that prior to the physical therapy he'd needed to make up for nearly a month of fevers, unconsciousness and various other unpleasantness, followed by years of progressively more radical and obscure treatments, the most exercise he'd had since high school was due to a malfunctioning alarm clock and a class halfway across campus. Thinking vile thoughts at the creaky joints of his current host, Vlad crossed the room, careful to mimic the body language of his current host for the benefit of the security camera. Minor discrepancies could be explained as the product of one too many drinks – it wasn't as though anyone knew the man well enough to vouch that he didn't drink at work. Major discrepancies… Very few people would recognize the symptoms of any form of possession, but those who could were people he wanted believing Vlad Masters was not in any way inhuman. Better to be safe.

Glancing at the computer screen, Vlad crossed back and removed his "special" disk. Giving the room one last once-over, he sat down in the chair and, very gently, pushed at the host's suppressed consciousness. There were a few methods he'd discovered to end an overshadowing, but after more than forty minutes brute force was the only one that really would hurt the host more than the ghost. Vlad gave himself a mental slap to the face when he realized he'd really thought up that ridiculously cheesy rhyme.

Remaining carefully invisible, he stepped hastily away from the moaning man in the chair. No doubt Samson Wren now had the mother of all splitting headaches, very little energy and a gap in his memory. All these were, incidentally, symptoms of a hangover. "Samson" had had a few sips of cheap beer procured at a local drugstore on the way to the research facility. Wren's behavior would be blamed on alcohol and thoughtlessness, if it was brought up at all. The man would likely be penalized, but what did he care?

Grinning to himself, Vlad patted the floppy disks in his coat pocket and turned to leave. He sauntered casually towards the south wall which would leave him a hallway and a broom closet from the parking lot, from which he could disappear – and promptly walked smack into it. Invisible, not intangible. Oops.

Vlad looked around and realized he'd managed to knock over a beaker of something volatile that he did not at all like the look of. Finally shaking off some of the post-overshadowing haze, Wren spotted the spill. Eyes wide, the researcher slammed his hand on a button on his desk, and alarms started going off. Mentally cursing (something involving marzipan that was best left unexplained), Vlad focused very hard on not slipping back into visibility. _Perhaps those few sips of alcohol had been a mistake, and I hadn't needed to take the "irresponsible drunk" cover quite so far. Intangible, intangible – oh, mother…_

He couldn't just walk out as he'd planned, not with the corridors packed with tired, cranky guards. He'd be trampled! Vlad looked around the room frantically for an alternate escape route. There had to be something!

He spotted a glint of metal against the sterile white paint. Blinking hard, he rubbed his eyes, hardly believing his luck.

"You have got to be kidding me," he muttered under his breath. Then he shrugged, climbed on the desk, and got to work unscrewing the cover panel. By the time the guards got there, there was no trace of him.

For a while, there was a hypothesis that Wren had been drugged or otherwise coerced. The hypothetical intruder might, might have somehow fooled the guards and security cameras, but how could he have escaped? Had he vanished into thin air, or perhaps out the air vents?

The man who'd designed the Axion Labs Research and Development Facility's ventilation system was promptly fired.

Across the city, a young man in a cheap motel made an emphatic mental note never to cut corners on security, and especially not the air vents.

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A/N: Set in the late eighties, not too long after Vlad got out of the hospital, hence the use of floppy disks.

Yes, I know the MythBusters disproved the "escape through the air vents" Hollywood convention, but Tucker used vents to get around in Doctor's Disorders, so it works in DP-verse.

…I spent way too long on setup. Constructive criticism, please? Or any reviews would be good. Thanks.


End file.
